How can the UK’s vulnerable food supply be shored up?

It doesn’t take a geopolitical genius to realise the world is rapidly becoming a more dangerous and unpredictable place.

War, climate shocks, cyber threats, energy crises and trade disruption have become recurring themes in recent years. And as these challenges escalate, the question of whether the food system can keep supermarkets stocked is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

The National Audit Office’s Resilience of the Food Supply Chain to Disruptions paper tackled that subject last week. It noted the UK’s food sector had “reacted quickly” and kept supply chains running through challenges such as the Ukraine war, Covid and last year’s cyberattacks that hit Co-op and M&S.

That had been achieved with “limited government intervention”, the spending watchdog said, with the sector’s resilience underpinned by “the ability to rapidly switch suppliers or source alternate products”.

But the worsening global outlook, plus the ever-growing inflationary pressures facing the food supply chain, mean supply-side risks are now becoming “more likely”, the NAO paper warned.

So, if the next big shock hit tomorrow, just how prepared would we be?

The NAO recognised recent government efforts to address growing risks to food supplies, by expanding its food supply chain resilience team and increasing its focus on planning for catastrophes.

However, its often stinging report outlined a litany of areas across supply chain resilience and food security where Defra and the wider government must do better.

Government efforts to prepare for future crises, plus its engagement with industry, had failed to keep pace with a “more volatile and rapidly evolving risk environment”, the paper claimed.

The NAO pointed to the government’s own admission in last year’s Resilience Action Plan as a case in point. In the plan, Defra admitted it was “less confident” that businesses could continue to withstand major shocks without government intervention over the next five to 10 years.

Build ‘store of food’

That concern was echoed by Defra secretary Angela Eagle last Friday in a carefully worded interview with The Guardian, in which she discussed the rapidly escalating El Niño climate pattern.

While Eagle was clearly keen to downplay fears over the impact of wider supply chain shocks on food provision, her suggestion that households should build up “a store of food that can keep you going before emergency services can get to you” raised understandable concerns and made big headlines in the national media.

This kind of preparation would boost resilience, she argued. And while ministers are yet to fully sound the alarm when it comes to stockpiling, Eagle’s comments come amid a broader shift in government thinking.

Last month, reports emerged that the Cabinet Office was preparing a new resilience campaign to encourage households to keep basic supplies such as tinned food and bottled water at home.

But the NAO found preparedness and Defra’s “understanding of the sector” was still “mixed”. It also noted the industry’s ‘just in time’ supply chain “leaves it more vulnerable to disruptions”.

Furthermore, it described the government’s ‘playbook’ for food supply disruptions as heavily “focused on government structures and processes”, while lacking sufficient input and operational detail from the food sector.

Defra had published a paper called Towards a Good Food Cycle last year, which included an objective to “improve the resilience of the food supply chain”. However, the government department “had not set out how it will achieve this or measure improvements”, the NAO noted.

It also pointed out no national exercise on food supply resilience had been undertaken since 2023, despite the government recognising limitations to its approach even then – and recommending “detailed national plans be produced across several key sectors, including food supply”.

Defra had assessed the cost of developing such emergency plans, but decided it was “disproportionate to the level of risk and likelihood”, the NAO reported.

And even if the government did decide “to direct businesses to take actions during an emergency situation”, Defra currently lacked the legal power to compel them to act, it added.

All of this, of course, reflects long-standing warnings from within the industry.

The Cold Chain Federation, for example, sounded an alarm over the temperature-controlled network in a June report. The system underpins up to half of Britain’s food supply but was largely overlooked in resilience planning and “not acknowledged as critical national infrastructure”, it argued.

Meanwhile, Marco Forgione of the Chartered Institute of export and international trade echoed the NAO’s warnings over a lack of joined-up thinking and government engagement with industry last month. He called for more meaningful engagement between government and industry via a permanent Cobra committee-style mechanism.

Ultimately, “the government has a duty to do all it can to make us ready for the huge challenges which may come”, argues former FDF CEO Ian Wright. “And so far, there are few signs that it’s on the case.”

As CCF CEO Phil Pluck puts it: “Now is the time for food supply experts and government to work together to ensure food supplies reach the public no matter what crisis hits the UK.”

Food & Drink Wholesale UK CEO James Bielby also supports the creation of a “permanent, dominant industry food resilience forum”.

Such a mechanism could help address the “lack of co-ordination” between government and industry, suggests Professor Tim Lang, who last year published a comprehensive report on preparedness. He also questions the language used by Eagle last week.

“It’s not engaging [people on the issue]. People on low incomes can’t store food. They haven’t got the money,” he adds. Lang also points to the significance of the NAO as a key public body, effectively telling Defra “you’ve got to get your act together on this”.

For its part, Defra insisted to The Grocer that it was “working with farmers and the food and drink industry to strengthen food security and resilience”.

The detail and collaboration involved in that work may determine whether the UK is ready for the next major shock. Or whether, once again, it will have to rely on the ingenuity of a highly pressured industry to keep food flowing